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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photofamily photoGarrett Harper, 16, of New Holland, Ohio, has fought pediatric bone cancer since 2009. He’s receiving chemotherapy. His mother, Beth, doubts it would be possible to fund cancer research from just private sources.

WASHINGTON — Scientists on the cusp of life-saving discoveries about hundreds of diseases are
facing the possibility of a significant financial roadblock.

For Dr. John Barnard of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, this is one of the most exhilarating and
worrisome moments in recent scientific history — a Sputnik moment with an asterisk.

“Scientists are giddy right now for the potential for major breakthroughs and progress in the
next few years,” he said.

Today, thanks to the Human Genome Project cracking the human genetic code, scientists know about
the molecular basis for 4,421 diseases, compared with 2,770 just six years ago. That information
offers a path to understanding the causes of diseases, how to prevent them and, most important, how
to cure them.

Yet even as scientists close in on astonishing discoveries, they face the possibility of budget
cuts from Washington, where a 12-member committee of lawmakers is seeking ways to reduce the
federal deficit by as much as $1.5 trillion during the next decade.

The bipartisan group of House members and senators, which includes Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio,
faces a Nov. 23 deadline to finish its work. Congress, in turn, is tasked with deciding on the
recommendations with an up-or-down vote by Christmas.

Everything is on the proverbial table, but the stakes are high: If the supercommittee does not
reach an agreement, or Congress does not agree to a supercommittee-approved package, it will result
in across-the-board cuts for all federal discretionary programs.

The National Institutes of Health’s portion: between 5 and 10 percent each year for the next 10
years.

“When funding is tight, and we can see the potential, it’s doubly frustrating that we can’t move
forward,” said Barnard, president of the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s. “We can see
the endgame here. For a lot of us, it’s tantalizingly close.”

In 2009, federal research funding, including for the National Science Foundation, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, totaled $45.9 billion.
Philanthropy, meanwhile, accounted for $1.1 billion in federal research dollars, according to Ellie
Dehoney, a former aide to Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who now works as vice president of public
policy and programs at Research!America, an organization that promotes research.

Dehoney said the worst scenario will be if the supercommittee doesn’t come up with a proposal
that can pass Congress. “If they do across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending, that’s a big
hit,” she said.

Barnard said Nationwide Children’s received about $70 million worth of external grant money last
year. Of that, about $50 million came from federal sources.

Potential cuts “are front of mind for me.”

The impact would be tangible. At Nationwide Children’s, they’re working on a variety of research
projects. Among them: drugs to treat cancer in children, a vaccine to fight ear infections,
research on the impact of premature birth. And they’re designing “potentially curative” treatments
for muscular dystrophy.

“Never before in history have we had a better opportunity to capitalize on the investments we’ve
made in biomedical research and medical innovation,” he said. “In the last 10 to 20 years, the
amount of new knowledge that has been generated has been spectacular. And it’s only now that we’re
in a position to recognize the dividends of that.”

For Beth Harper of New Holland, about 40 miles southwest of Columbus in Fayette County, the
stakes are even higher.

Her son, Garrett, 16, has fought pediatric bone cancer since 2009. He’s receiving chemotherapy.
The long-term goal is to beat back the cancer to the point where doctors can operate.

“You don’t realize how many children are fighting these diseases,” she said. “The drugs Garrett
has received are old drugs, except for one clinical trial. These drugs have been given for cancer
for many, many years, which kind of blows your mind in an age of all these new advances.”

She said she doubts it would be possible to fund the necessary research from private
sources.

Research funding has been a bright light in Ohio’s otherwise dismal economy. According to a
study by United for Medical Research, NIH funding contributed to 16,675 jobs in 2010.

Sen. Brown characterizes such funding as part of the country’s infrastructure. Medical research
dollars “build foundations for jobs.”

“We can’t only cut our way to prosperity,” he said.

Research and medical innovation are “huge economic engines in the United States and in Ohio,”
Barnard said. For every dollar in NIH funding, seven jobs are created, the Nationwide Children’s
doctor said.

“A huge part of our economy is research and discovery,” he said.

The threat that the supercommittee or Congress will fail to reach an agreement also is a worry
to Drew Willison of Columbus-based Battelle, who says the automatic cuts essentially would allow
Congress to “forgo the opportunity to set priorities.”

“You’re saying everything is a priority, at a lower point,” he said.

Health and life-science research is one of Battelle’s missions. Among its projects is a 25-year
study of environmental factors and their effect on children’s health.

Willison said that federal funding cuts could require scaling back that study and others. But
the biggest threat is to the studies that are just beginning.

“Pressure is going to be on things in the pipeline,” he said.

Dr. Paul DiCorleto, chairman of the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, said
2,400 jobs at the facility are research jobs. He estimates that two-thirds of those positions are
federally funded. Money translates directly to jobs. About 60 to 70 percent of the money it
receives from NIH goes to salaries, he said.

In all, the clinic gets about $175 million in external support for research per year. Of that,
federal funding accounts for about $105 million.

“If we lose grants, the jobs are gone,” he said. “It’s the opposite way you want to go when you’r
e trying to rebuild the economy.”

Jobs aren’t the only things at risk.

Caroline C. Whitacre, the vice president for research at Ohio State University, said such cuts
would have a chilling effect on students who might want to become researchers.

“There’s a morale implication in all of this,” she said. “If you have a reduction in numbers of
positions that are available, the average student coming down the line who sees that, they say, ‘
Well, I’m going to go into another field.’ ”

With less research funding, new scientists are less likely to get grants. Many institutions, she
said, are looking only to hire investigators who already have secured research funding, rather than
those who still need it.

“What really worries me, overall, is who is going to train the next generation of scientists?”
she asks. “If institutions like OSU or institutions like Indiana or Penn State only hire funded
investigators … then you have this group of young people who basically don’t have anywhere to
go.

“It hurts the position of the entire country,” Whitacre said.

Alice Krumm, 43, of Lewis Center, north of Columbus in Delaware County, has seen the impact of
clinical research firsthand. She’s the nurse manager for perioperative services at the Arthur G.
James Cancer Hospital at Ohio State.

She’s also a breast-cancer survivor.

When she was diagnosed at 38, her first thought was that she needed to survive for her
daughters, Kaylee and Kelsey.

“I had to be there; I could not leave them,” she said. “Death was not an option.”

She said clinical research helped her fight her cancer. She said research dollars also have
helped doctors learn about the genetic component to breast cancer — and might give her daughters
less-invasive treatment options, or even a cure, if they ever have to fight cancer.

But more than that, she said, research dollars help survivors know that doctors are still
working for better options and better opportunities. One of the horrible parts of having cancer,
she said, is knowing that it might come back.

Research, she said, helps give cancer survivors peace of mind that the fight continues even
after they’re cancer-free.